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These 12 wines show tempranillo in many of its 21st century styles. There’s classic tempranillo from the Rioja region of Spain; post-modern Spanish tempranillo; regional tempranillo from Texas and Colorado; a highly-regarded Oregon label; and even one from Argentina.

Tempranillo for years languished in wine’s outer orbit, though that banishment had little to do with quality. Rijoa’s wines are some of the best in the world. Rather, tempranillo wasn’t cabernet sauvignon, merlot, or pinot noir, and those are the reds that got most of the attention. Wine geeks knew about it, but the grape deserves a wider audience than that.

Enter the Internet, which has allowed tempranillo and its advocates to sidestep the Winestream Media, as with today’s fourth annual International Tempranillo Day. Also important: The discovery that tempranillo does well outside of Spain, something that no one understood before and that has revolutionized Texas wine. I’ve even had tempranillo from Idaho, about as different a region from Rioja as imaginable. No castles, for one thing.

Why is tempranillo worth drinking? First, the Spanish versions are among the best values in the world. Second, it’s a food-friendly wine that doesn’t insult the wine drinker; in fact, most tempranillo needs food, be it red meat or roast chicken. Third, it’s not the usual red wine, and anyone who wants to enjoy wine should be eager to try something that isn’t the usual.

Rosanne Palacios rose to her feet, took a breath, and then slowly and carefully, in front of the hundred or so people in the audience, said: “I”m a recovering Texas wine snob.”

The crowd cheered and there was even a ripple of applause. “Five years ago,” said Palacios, a hospital development director in Laredo, “I thought all Texas was wine terrible. Then I came here, and I’ve been drinking Texas wine since.”

Here was the Texas wine tasting at the annual Kerrviile fall music festival, where I’ve been preaching the gospel of Texas wine for almost a decade. So you can imagine how I felt when Palacios stood up. Giddy, practically. But that wasn’t the only reason to be excited about Texas wine based on what I saw during my three days in the Hill Country:

• There was the 20-something man at the Walmart automotive center getting a flat on his pickup truck fixed. “I don’t drink much wine,” he said, talking about the Texas wineries he and his wife had visited over the weekend, “but this has been a lot of fun.”

• The chef who stood up during the Kerrville panel and said, “Thanks to the Texas industry for getting this right. I was here 20 years ago, and I really wondered if they’d ever be able to do it.”

• The middle-aged Jack Daniels drinker who made a return trip to one winery tasting room because he couldn’t believe how much he enjoyed the wine. He even bought a couple of more bottles.

This does not mean there still aren’t problems, which I saw at this year’s Lone Star judging and that cropped up a couple times over the weekend. We still have a long way to go with wine education, for one thing, though that’s not necessarily a Texas problem. What’s important is that the first step in making Texas wine work has been taken. Consumers are willing to try it. Now the onus is on the wineries to produce quality wine at an affordable price that is uniquely Texas, and not a California or French knockoff.

Because consumers like Palacios are ready, willing, and able. “I’ve got a lot of wine drinking friends who won’t drink Texas wine,” she told me when I chatted with her after the panel. “So I’m going to do a blind tasting with these wines when we do our next tasting.”

That’s three days of appearances at Grapefest — at 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 12, 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 13 and noon on Sept. 14. We’ll talk wine, the cheap wine book, and Texas wine as part of the People’s Choice Awards, one of the largest consumer-judged wine festivals in the country.

I’ll be at the Palace Theater in historic downtown Grapevine. In air conditioning, always a plus this time of year. Stop by, ask questions, buy books, and talk about wine.